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gmane.comp.infodesign.facetedclassification |
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Mr. Boyink,
I think your hunch was correct. What you have described is a product
catalog where each offering (each record in the database) is
organized into several independent classifications where your client
wants to let users browse (drill-down) multi-dimensionally. In your
example, users ought to be able to browse cars
by "Horsepower", "Towing Capacity", "Passenger
Space", "Price", "Utility" etc.
Although your example is one where the database is already
classified, I think that the discussion group would be served well to
talk this example through and to become aware of how your
requirements can be achieved. Notwithstanding that this group
focuses on the task of classification, it would indeed be helpful to
walk through this example because in my experience, most commercial
and government databases are already classified -- or have inherent
classifications that already exist in the data.
Take for example the discussion about "generating facets" by going
through a 20-questions exercise. While I do think this is an
interesting and clever way to go about trying to figure out how to
organize data from a particular domain, it is a fact that most if not
all commercial (and government) databases - like the one you have
described - already contain at least some inherent structure. And,
even where it is necessary to classify data into a new categorization
(e.g., where you have two disparate databases and you want to relate
all the records from both databases into a common taxonomy), it is
important to determine what classifications already exist in the
databases so that these classifications can be leveraged for purposes
of search and retrieval. Many times, inherent categorizations are
ignored much to the demise of the end-users.
There are several tools available in the marketplace that would be
useful and help you to achieve your client's objectives.
Here is a link to a product catalog that is organized by "product
type" and by "price"
http://collectors.i411.com
Azim Tejani
--- In [email protected], "Mike Boyink"
<lists@b...> wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> My name is Michael Boyink, and I'm an independent consultant from
West
> Michigan.. I've been subscribed to the group for some time now -
having
> originally subscribed to learn more about the list topic as it
pertained
> to website navigation as it seemed to be a more powerful way to
present
> complex content.
>
> I'm now bumping into a project that feels related in a different
way,
> and I need to see if I'm "in the right room".
>
> Let me see if I can stay on the lawyer-friendly side of the NDA I
> signed, and give you enough information to provide any insight. I
have
> a client that manufactures a complex, highly configurable product.
> Their product comprises several product lines. These product lines
all
> share traits, but have differing amounts of those traits. They
want to
> provide a tool to browse typical configurations of their products
based
> on the users selecting which amounts of each trait they are
interested
> in.
>
> For example, if this client was an auto manufacturer, picture a tool
> where you could go and see a picture of a car. Under that car is a
> "graphic equalizer" arrangement of sliders, labeled "Horsepower",
> "Towing Capacity", "Passenger Space", "Price", "Utility" etc. As
you
> choose a slider and adjust it, the picture of the car would change
to a
> different model from that manufacturer. If you slid "Towing
Capacity"
> high, and "Passenger Space" low, the interface might present you a
truck
> rather than a car, etc.
>
> This almost feels like "multifaceted browsing" rather
than "multifaceted
> classification", but my gut feeling is that they are related at the
root
> level, and possibly just a different interface running on the same
> dataset.
>
> So first of all, am I in the right room here? Has anyone seen or
built
> such an interface? Would some of the tools discussed on this list
be a
> good starting point for developing this sort of thing?
>
> TIA,
>
> Mike Boyink
> Holland, MI
> <http://www.boyink.com/> http://www.boyink.com
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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